How to Backup Your Computer in Windows 7

Hard drive failure is an unfortunately common experience and chances are you will face some data loss at home or at work in your lifetime – and there’s a big chance it could occur this year. As more of our assets, such as our digital photography, is moved into the digital space, backing up your computer is becoming an essential part of your use of technology. Fortunately, Microsoft has built-in a backup software into Windows 7 that makes it easy to back up your data. Unfortunately, it isn’t automatic like Time Machine is on the Mac – on Windows, you still must configure the backup software to work. This requires a little more than your every day computer knowledge so this tutorial is written to help you through the process of backing up your computer in Windows 7.

In this free Windows 7 tutorial, you will learn how to backup your computer using Windows Backup. Fortunately, the software isn’t too complex and once you understand how to set it up, you will be able to backup your computer as often as you want. You can also configure Windows backup to automatically back up your computer on a schedule.

How to Use Windows Backup

Click on the Start menu and select Control Panel.

Under System and Security, select Back up your computer.

There are several options on the Backup and Restore Control Panel. A system image is a copy of the system as it is so you can rebuild the computer if the hard drive crashes. We’re going to run a backup of our files, so we’re going to click on Set up backup.

Windows will first setup your backup software.

First, you need to select a destination for your backup. This screen will list the other drives on your computer including the DVDRW drive on my computer – a place to make backups to removable media. In this tutorial, we’re going to backup our data to the D: drive. Once you select the drive, click Next.

You can either select the files yourself or let Windows select the most common files. It also creates a backup schedule.

Click on Save settings and run backup to finish the process.

Your backup is now in progress.

Congratulations! You’ve setup your computer to be backed up. It will also automatically schedule a backup to run. You can change the date and time your backup runs on this screen.